In the following essay, Walsh delineates the relationship between Invisible Man and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

In Shadow and Act, Ralph Ellison credits an early reading of The Waste Land as the impetus for his "real transition to writing." Invisible Man reveals the profundity of this experience. Important scenes, characters, and events in Invisible Man recreate prototypes from The Waste Land. Identifying his avatars by strong patterns of allusion, Ellison creates a dry, devastated land of the human spirit which reaches into the mythic past. The protagonist of Invisible Man reenacts the journey of the quester in The Waste Land. His search for the truths which will bring spiritual renewal ends with his perception of his invisibility and his corresponding acceptance of the ideal precepts of American democracy.